News disputes claim on hackers

By Karen Kissane

17 November 2011 — 3:00am

NEWS International could not guarantee that phone hacking had stopped after the News of the World's royal reporter was jailed for it in 2007, but the company disputed the claim that 28 staff had been involved in the practice, the Leveson inquiry into the media has heard.

The company's barrister, Rhodri Davies, QC, said News accepted that hacking was not the work of a single rogue reporter but thought the evidence found by Scotland Yard ''does not add up to 28''.

Counsel assisting the inquiry, Robert Jay, QC, had claimed that the names of 28 News staff had been found in the corners of pages in the notebooks of private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who was jailed along with a reporter in 2007 for illegally intercepting voicemails.

Mr Davies said the claim of 28 names ''has occasioned some surprise at our side'' and the company ''would like to have this information rechecked''.

It had previously known of only five ''corner names'' in Mulcaire's notes, he said.

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He also disputed Mr Jay's claim that reporters for another News publication, The Sun, might have been involved in the practice.

But Mr Davies ''unreservedly'' apologised for hacking, saying it was wrong, shameful and should never have happened.

He said the paper had largely put its house in order after the convictions in 2007, which had been ''salutary'', with ''lessons learned''.

''If hacking continued after that date, it was not the thriving cottage industry which existed beforehand,'' he said.

Meanwhile, the hacking scandal continued to intensify pressure on James Murdoch to step down as chairman of British satellite broadcaster BSkyB, as a collection of shareholder groups and investors emerged as a powerful protest lobby.

An investor activist group called Pensions and Investment Research Consultants told shareholders to vote against the reappointment of Mr Murdoch at the annual meeting on November 29.

Mr Murdoch is executive chairman of News International, the company that ran the now-defunct tabloid News of the World, the paper whose hacking sparked a wave of public revulsion.

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The lawyer for the publisher of the Daily Mail, Associated Newspapers, told the Leveson inquiry that as far as that company was aware none of its journalists had engaged in phone hacking.